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Monday, November 9, 2009

Cat Man vs Modern Literature

Mike Hoffman (who is just gonna love being quoted out of context here...) once told me that one of the big problems with what the Literati and Academic world considers GOOD fiction is that always has to have a bad ending. At the time, I thought this was ludicrous, but he cited a laundry list of novels that Academia considers great fiction to make his point. He said that if a book ends on an upbeat or *happy* ending, then no one will take it serious.

Now, I'm still not convinced this is truly the case, but I will say that it does seem to be a prevalent trend in such books. (think Faulkner, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Carson McCullers, Dorothy Allison, ect...)

I sometimes think this notion infects American Comic books as well. For instance, of late, I've been thinking about Cat Man, the Holyoke Publishing character I've feature here once or twice before...

I've been thinking about doing something with the character, but not in the typical fashion. Somehow utilizing Pierre's very stark and interesting Bob Morane Style. I would like to tell a story with this character that shows a little of what his life is after his glory years, but avoid most of the hoary cliches that JMS seems to be mining in The Twelve ( "Remember this great Golden Age character? Well, here's how effed up he really was!")

I think there are ways to tell modern stories with Golden Age characters that don't necessarily have to be subversive pop psychological parables.

I liked Steve Englehart's take on Batman... he showed Batman as being highly rational the smartest one in the room. I somehow don't think that's how JMS approaches Golden Age characters. When I went to Wikipedia to read up on The Twelve, the entry for Rockman sounded like someone back then was trying an earth-based version of the Sub-Mariner; JMS seems to have gone in some other direction with him. Of course that could be a red herring...

I think what you are looking for is ComicZeal - go to the ComicZeal site - Emil (the developer) made a program ComicZeal Sync that will take a cbr and turn it into a file that can be read on your iPod.